The Internet Monk Archives

Post-Progressive

Three Falls, One Canyon. Photo by Ralph Earlandson at Flickr

Labels aren’t everything, but here at Internet Monk we’ve talked a lot about being post-evangelical. The subtitle for the blog used to be “dispatches from the Post-Evangelical wilderness.” That was Michael Spencer’s journey, and it was also mine. From the culture of American evangelicalism to…what? Michael never really found a home in another tradition but remained in the “wilderness” until the day he died nine years ago. I eventually found a home in the Lutheran theological tradition — especially that of Luther himself– but I remain in something of a “post-ecclesiastical” position, still feeling like a square peg in a round hole when it comes to the institutional church.

Back in August 2010, we suggested in a series of posts that there were “Three Streams in the Post-Evangelical Wilderness.”

The “emerging” movement, which has morphed into “progressive” Christianity.
The “ancient-future” movement, which for many (like me), has meant a return to historic traditions and practices.
The “neo-Calvinist” movement, which embraces Reformed or Puritan dogmatic traditions.

These movements are still going strong, but now Richard Beck has suggested that it might be time to move on from some of these post-evangelical movements into something new. He has been calling himself a “post-progressive” Christian recently, and he has begun a series at his blog on what that might entail.

The reason I’m describing myself as post-progressive is that enough alienation has built up between myself and progressive Christianity that I’ve come to recognize that when I hear progressive Christians talk I tend to have as many objections and concerns about what they are saying as I do affirmations. In some important way, I’ve moved to a different location within Christianity and I’d like to map out where I stand in some detail.

Beyond making a contrast with progressive Christianity I find this task necessary for another reason as well. I’ve shared many of my criticisms about progressive Christianity on the blog and a few readers, in reading these criticisms, have said that it sounds like I’m becoming more “conservative.” I get why they think that. When you hear criticism of progressivism that’s mostly coming from a conservative person or viewpoint. So it’s natural, when you hear my own criticism of progressivism, to assume that I’m drifting back to the “other side,” back to conservatism.

But that is not what is happening. I’m not moving back to conservatism, I’m moving on from progressivism into a new, unoccupied space. What I aim to describe is post-progressive, a view still rooted in progressive Christianity but distinct from it as well. I’ll make this clear in the posts to come, how I’m still progressive, but have moved on in some important ways.

One thing is clear to me: if we are growing, we change. Old wineskins can’t contain the new wine. We realize it’s time to move on.

There is a kind of restlessness that can be a cop out. Things get hard and we suddenly “feel led” to make a change. That’s not what Richard Beck is talking about. He is talking about a journey of observing, learning, growing, and maturing. And realizing he doesn’t fit. He has, in his words, “moved to a different location within Christianity.”

I respect that. It is the same spirit I so appreciated in Michael Spencer. I hope I have enough courage to follow their example until the end of my days.

Monday with Michael Spencer: Chronicle of the Journey

Note from CM: Internet Monk has always been about the journey. Michael Spencer led the way by sharing his with us. Back in 2008, around the time I began reading and listening to his podcasts, Michael had the opportunity to take a sabbatical. This sabbatical gave him opportunity to chronicle the path he had taken, especially in the recent midlife years he had been going through, and the surprises and struggles those years brought.

• • •

In April of 06, I felt God instructing me to resign from the church I was serving. It was the church our family called home for a decade. I’d served them for 12 years. I had no idea that it was the end of almost any sense of spiritual “home” at all, and the beginning of a season of much change.

In May of that year, my son left home for college. In June, my daughter married. A few weeks later she would move to another state and temporarily quit college. (She’s graduating OSU in a few days, and I am very, very proud. But at the time, it was tough.)

In July of 06, my mother, who was living with us, came to the breakfast table and started speaking in a confused manner. Fourteen hours later, she was dead.

In September, I turned 50. The empty nest and the second half of life threw the party. I wouldn’t book them if I were you. Those guys are not much fun.

In these months, I was also trying to begin a home worship fellowship with some hope that, within 2-3 years, it might become the early version of a church. I was trying to preserve what my family had loved about worship in our little Presbyterian church and what I was discovering in the emerging tradition.

Despite many good aspects of that effort, it failed and in the summer of 07, I brought it to a tearful and embarrassing end. Two “church” losses in a year was devastating to my sense of having a spiritual home, and I still haven’t recovered.

In the meantime, God and my wife got together and decided that what I really needed was for her to start down the road to joining the Roman Catholic church. Everything my wife knew about Catholicism she’d learned from me, and she had almost no experience with the Roman Catholic church until Lent of 07. God’s directives to her at that time, however, were so clear that she knew she had to follow them despite the obvious consequences on various levels of our relationship and my ministry.

She told me the news, Pandora’s Box was opened and the Harpies took the keys to my life for the next few months.

Today, she’s somewhere in the RCIA journey and recently thanked me for my “support,” because she has been happier this past year than ever in recent memory. I had to laugh, because my “support” came from an experience somewhere between the rack and a 6 month root canal without anesthesia.

I was literally bombed out of my previous understanding of “the way things are supposed to be in a minister’s life.” It was like living through repeated showings of an imploding stadium, and I was the stadium.

Fortunately, God was determined to keep me in the wrestling ring until I yelled “Bless me.” I don’t have to tell you how that turned out, do I? I can now say “Bless me” in several Biblical languages.

I’ve still got an occasional bit of fight left in me, but the new version of my faith is considerably lighter, more Jesus shaped and – you’re going to love this- quite Shack/Greg Boyd influenced. (Oh calm down. I don’t believe everything Greg Boyd believes, but the last few weeks his preaching has been wonderful in its ministry to my confused heart.)

Oh. Did I mention that God and I are talking a LOT more these days, and I’m learning to recognize the voice of Jesus separate from my own head and the soundtrack of all the religious garbage that’s filled my head and heart for decades?

God provided a sabbatical so that I could have 8 weeks to work on the process of getting down to Jesus basics and knowing who I was in the new terrain of my existence. I appreciate it, because I needed (and need) it.

Simultaneously with all of these events, strange things began to happen to me at my job. Exceedingly strange. For instance, I was criticized for writing in my moleskine during sermons and for going to the restroom. All who live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Nothing you’d find interesting, but plenty to make me wake up every day and wonder if someone is filming a reality show about me, with the premise of changing all my certainties when I’m asleep and then watching the confused reaction. If you see Season One on DVD, I’d like to purchase a copy. Maybe I can laugh at the commercials.

Oh, I thought I needed a friend, so I bought a dog. The dog hates me.

When I talk to Jesus about all this recent history, he says things like “It’s all mercy,” and “The only response is to be a servant,” and “What are you here for?” and “Who are the people who simply suffer and pray? Ever thought about them?” and my favorite “Just let me take care of _______________.”

The genuine Jesus, if you can actually get the station, can really be annoying to your natural survival instincts of blame, self-pity and anger.

You see, I’ve been trained my whole life to think like a pietistic Calvinist. There had to be a REASON for all of this. There has to be a LESSON. I get to ask WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO LEARN? So picture me spending all kinds of mental energy trying to find what was the great lesson at the core of all of this that, when I learned it, would make it all go away.

Riiiiight.

And when I ask what all this means and what I am supposed to learn, Jesus just asks questions back, or says things like “Why don’t you go down that road and see what happens. You’ll never know if you just pout.” Or “Just obey me tomorrow and we’ll find out.”

There doesn’t seem to be some resounding THEME or amazing LESSON. As Greg Boyd says, from my point of view, it just all seems to be hitting the fan. God BRINGS good out of it, but if I want to say that he caused it all (which I still do for lack of any other way to express faith and confusion simultaneously) with some CERTAIN LESSON in mind, I don’t get very far. Like he said, “Go down the road, and you’ll see what’s there.” Kind of God’s version of “When we get there, you’ll know.”

I’m a fifty one year old guy whose days leading churches in his denomination are probably over, whose wife got burned out in the non-existent “spirituality” of 30+ years of Baptist church life and ministry, who has been at his current job long enough for some people to wish he wasn’t, who has been stationed out on the frontier where there are no churches to shop, who spent so many years thinking so many things in his head were scriptural, reformed and right that it really hurts to have to admit he was wrong, wrong and wrong. In that order.

I’m just a guy with a life, and life is full of failure and loss. I wanted MINISTRY to be the ongoing reward. I wanted USEFULNESS to be my satisfaction. I wanted to be SIGNIFICANT. I wanted the contract to be in place and the insurance to protect me because I was the guy with the Bible. Well, that didn’t go very well, did it?

God thought it was time for all that nonsense to stop, and for the lifelong addiction I’d developed to my church as my universe, my wife as unquestioning supporter and my theology as my version of the inerrant Word of God to end. He made an appointment to pull the teeth, and I was not consulted in advance.

Ordinary life, extraordinary events and stuff that just don’t make no sense all combine to rearrange the furniture of my world. Every time I head for a comfortable seat, God sells it. Every time I look for the comfort food, the fridge is empty. Every time I get out my copy of “Things You KNOW Are True,” the dog has eaten it.

My faith continues. Jesus now fills the picture in a way he didn’t before. I realize I have a lot to learn from simple people who never get into pulpits and who aren’t supposed to know everything in the Bible like I supposedly do. My love for my wife and our Christian marriage continues, and there is much good that was not there before. I returned to church today, alone- something that in my anger I said I wouldn’t do. I was reminded that here I won’t ever be turned away from the table. I prayed for the five who were baptized. I was reminded that the faith goes far beyond me, my time, my preferences and my lifetime. I looked, and there were the people of God, and I was one of them. They asked me to lead in prayer, and the words were more careful than before.

I was grateful. I talked to Jesus and he told me it is all going to be all right, that I’m free to walk the new path as I can, and he will not leave me or forsake me. I felt sorry for my sin, and happy to know my Savior loves me.

Life goes on. Losses, gains, light, shadow, confusion, laughter, tears, God, Jesus, Denise, me.

When I look up from the road, I notice that the lights in the distance are closer and the noise behind me is not as loud.

Good journey friends. See you on up the road.

Another Look: Joe and Marge

Note from CM: It is good for me to look back on the relationships I have had in my hospice work. I don’t do it enough. Tonight, looking through some old posts, I was reminded of Joe and Marge, whom I knew in 2012. And my heart broke again.

• • •

Marge died today.

A petite, pretty octogenarian, she had been wandering in the world of Alzheimer dementia for many years. I’ve known her for a few of those years, at least I’ve known the lady who rarely sat still, who moved continually from one place to another, looking out the windows, fluffing and straightening the pillows, and then sitting down for a moment, her knees rising and falling as her legs bounced incessantly. Then it was up again, muttering this or that, moving like a tumbleweed blowing across the floor, rarely at rest, moved by some mysterious wind.

“Pleasantly confused” we’d write in our notes, because she’d smile, say a few words that may or may not make sense, give you her hand, and then rise to move about some more.

But today there she lay, still as can be.

Joe, her husband, in the immediate aftermath of her death, seemed a bit lost without her to chase around. His carefully maintained routine had now reached its end.

Joe is also a mover, an actor, a doer. He took care of Marge for a long time. Though he has twenty five years on me I never thought of him as being “old.” He had been an athlete in high school and college, still has most of his hair, and he moves energetically around the house. The military had given him a lot — discipline, plain and direct speech, self-confidence and good habits, a profound sense of duty, and impeccable organization skills. He is a smart man too. Joe had worked for the phone company and he is a master at diagnosing and fixing problems. With all his gifts, he still has an easy, “aw shucks” down-home Hoosier personality. He’s always smiling, quick with a story or a saying, or a “can I get you something?” offer. Then he’s off on the move again, serving his wife by keeping the routine going.

Most of all, he loves Marge.

I don’t mean he is sentimental or romantic. He may be, but I have not seen that side of him. What I have witnessed is the essence of what I take love to be: being with and for another for that person’s benefit.

When Marge came on hospice service, Joe made it clear to everyone that he was her caregiver. We were there to help him, if and when he needed it.

He allowed the nurse to come, of course, to assess Marge and manage her medicines (and he wanted her to have as little of that as possible — only what was necessary). No health aide was needed. He would bathe her and take care of her personal needs. He rarely required social worker visits because he had all the practical matters settled. And in the beginning, he did not want the chaplain. They had their faith and that was enough. Joe believed in routine and didn’t want others coming in and disrupting theirs because he thought it best for Marge.

So, every night they would go to bed past midnight after watching their favorite late night TV show. Marge would sleep soundly until late in the morning. Joe awoke early, did whatever errands he needed to do, and then returned home, read his paper and prepared breakfast for them. He awakened his dear wife, helped her to the bathroom and got her clean and dressed, and then they sat down for breakfast together. While he was finishing up in the kitchen, she would start making her laps around the house, occasionally sitting down to watch a few moments of TV. Joe would spend the day taking care of the household and their affairs while keeping an eye on her and tending to her needs.

On it went throughout each day. Together they played the same sonata over and over again, now moving, now resting, now faster, now slower. On Fridays, he took Marge on a weekly outing to get her hair done. However, for years, they spent the vast majority of their time hidden away, retracing their steps around a closed course. Their world was small, but filled with love. Joe was always with her. Joe was always for her. And she always knew him and responded to him.

After a couple of offers, Joe agreed to let me, the chaplain, come out. I think he wanted to apologize for seeming inhospitable and to let me know that they were people of faith. He just wanted to interrupt Marge’s routine as little as possible.

We had a good visit. I found out they had been hurt and disillusioned by some experiences in church and preferred to keep private about practicing their beliefs. I also found out how funny Joe was and what a good storyteller he could be. He liked me too, and I guess you could say we hit it off. He agreed that I could come out once a month.

He would never have put it this way, but I know these visits were for him, not Marge. He had found someone with whom he could talk and laugh for a little while, and he needed that. I was amazed he felt like he only needed it once a month. We’d talk about his growing-up years and his old neighborhood, sports (always, especially basketball), what he used to do at work, what was happening in his extended family, places he and Marge had traveled, and so on. We had good, friendly conversation while Marge made her rounds or sat in front of the television.

One time he apologized because he thought he might have offended me by saying something negative about church on a previous visit. The way he went about it let me know that he’d been thinking about this for a month and couldn’t wait to unload the burden he’d been carrying. Another time Joe seemed distracted during our usual small talk. After a pause in the conversation, he asked if I officiated funerals. He had been thinking maybe it was time to get that lined up.

Slowly, the routine required more of our team’s participation. The nurse came a little more often. Marge’s medicines needed tweaking to take care of new symptoms. At one point, Joe agreed to having the health aide come, especially to help wash Marge’s hair. It had become too much for her to go out on Fridays. The routine, like a great ship on the ocean, was slowly turning toward home port.

The last time I visited, Marge’s condition had changed noticeably. She was sleeping more and more and moving about less and less. She was far less sure on her feet, and Joe had to guard constantly against falls. To my surprise, he talked about getting a hospital bed and we had a conversation about where he would set it up and how it might help. As usual, he asked every question imaginable and considered every scenario. Joe kept saying, “I’m almost ready to do this.”

If and when it happened this decision would be huge. They had always slept in the same bed, always gone to bed together after watching their late night show. He had always been right next to her if she needed anything in the night. For forever and a day, he had awakened first, got up, and taken care of the morning for them. He had always been with her, by her side, and she with him.

I heard on our team voice mail this morning that Marge fell yesterday. While taking a nap, she had tumbled out of bed. Joe finally agreed they needed the hospital bed. It would come later that day and the nurse would go out to check on them. I decided to call and talk with Joe to see if I could be of any encouragement to him.

Before I had a chance to call, about an hour later, my phone rang. Jack had slept later than usual because he had been awake through the night, worried about Marge. But he knew he had to get up and get their daily routine going. He leaned over, kissed her, then got up and went out to the living room to watch the news. When he came back a few moments later to look in on her, she was gone. Right there in their bed, where she belonged.

He called the nurse and gave her the news.

They wouldn’t need the hospital bed, he told her.

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: June 29, 2019

6/23/19: Nik and Lijana Wallenda walk the high wire in Times Square, NYC. (Jason Szenes/AP)

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: June 29, 2019

ANGLICAN IMMIGRANT INITIATIVE…

With the refugee situation on our southern border rising to such prominence this past week, it is refreshing to read this:

For the two last years, the Church of St. Clement (Anglican) in El Paso had opened its doors monthly to house 30 of the many Central American asylum seekers pouring into El Paso, TX in search of safety and rest.

Once a month they pick up several vans full of those requesting asylum and provide them three days of a safe place to sleep, food to eat, showers, clothing and even toys for the children. Then they help these individuals and families connect to their sponsors and to the place where they will await their asylum hearings. While the seekers are at the church, they are given Spanish New Testaments and receive prayer from on site intercessors. If they are still there by Sunday morning, they attend the Holy Eucharist at Rey de Paz, St. Clement’s Spanish-language congregation.

When St. Clement’s began this ministry, they were helping meet a practical need. Today, they are trying to address a crisis. Each day, 300-700 asylum seekers pass legally through the US Border checkpoint in El Paso. Then Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement (ICE) loads them up into buses and drives them into El Paso’s downtown, and drops them off with no further assistance. While the federal government does have money allocated for the purpose of housing asylum seekers, as does the United Nations, the funds are blocked from use due to the complex US political debates around immigration. Consequently, ICE has requested that the churches and non-profits of El Paso help; St. Clement’s is one of the churches that answered the call.

While the national debate on immigration rages, how do we respond to an immediate crisis? When the vestry of the Church of St. Clement was asked permission to begin this ministry, they prayed for a month, and then voted unanimously to approve it. “It didn’t matter that our immigration system is broken,” explained Rector Bill Cobb, “the ‘refugees’ that are released by ICE and granted temporary legal status tell stories of the profound human need and desperation that led them to journey to the United States. We are reminded of Jesus words, ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:40).”

• • •

SIGNS THAT LET ME KNOW I’M NEAR HOME…

• • •

QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK…

• Is Ed Stetzer the next domino to fall in the James MacDonald saga?

For a religion that claims to be all about accountability, one that even frequently claims that people reject the religion out of hatred for accountability, they sure don’t believe in holding their leaders to it. Even the organizations that claim to hold church leaders to accountability through transparency in finances can’t actually do much if their members don’t cooperate. (Captain Cassidy, Roll to Disbelieve)

• Russell or Jerry Jr.?

“Pastors, theologians, church leaders, Christians, should be unanimously calling for a compassionate response, care, concern, and ministry to these children. It would be good if we could just all agree that we need to help and support positive solutions for these children,” Cross added.

Politico Magazine’s chief political correspondent, Tim Alberta also pointed to the political and cultural divide among evangelicals.

“This not a political statement but a simple fact of culture and theology: There are Russell Moore Christians and Jerry Falwell Jr. Christians. Choose wisely, brothers and sisters,” he said. (Leonardo Blair, Christian Post)

• Should we take Jeremiah 29:11 down off our walls?

Though the process of letting go was very hard, I no longer cling to the plan. I believe in something more tender, riskier, more fragile. I believe that human freedom isn’t an illusion; it’s the real deal. God works with the free choices we make in the free universe we live in. God dreams for us, hopes with us, and grieves with us in real time. God works in subtle, mysterious ways, always and everywhere, to redeem us without violating our freedom. (Debi Thomas, The Christian Century)

• Yes, we’ll have no bananas?

I had no idea, but bananas are the fourth biggest food staple in the world, behind rice, wheat, and corn. The banana used to be a luxury good. Now it’s the most popular fruit in the U.S. and elsewhere. But the production efficiencies that made it so cheap have also made it vulnerable to a deadly fungus that may wipe out the one variety most of us eat. Scientists have a way to save it — but will Big Banana let them? (Freakonomics Radio podcast, Episode 8-43)

• • •

THIRTY YEARS TOO LATE FOR ME…

I attended Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for seminary, which is affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church in America (EFCA). My intention was to become a pastor in the denomination. For various reasons, it never happened. One of the theological reasons involved an issue regarding eschatology.

The EFCA had a history of dispensationalism, though they were known for their willingness to debate certain aspects of that, such as the timing of the rapture (pre-trib/mid-trib/post-trib). One non-negotiable, however, was premillennialism. Their commitment to this was so strong that when they had an opportunity to hire Bruce Waltke, a world-renowned OT scholar, they demurred, because he was an amillennialist. Though I remained nominally premil in my theology, I was not thoroughly convinced and was open to other perspectives. That would not have served me well had I become an EFCA pastor.

But all that is changing now…

The EFCA Board of Directors has introduced a motion to amend Paragraph 9, Article III of the Articles of Incorporation of the EFCA, the Statement of Faith, as follows:

We believe in the personal, bodily and ~~premillennial~~ glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ. The coming of Christ, at a time known only to God, demands constant expectancy and, as our blessed hope, motivates the believer to godly living, sacrificial service and energetic mission.

This motion was unanimously and enthusiastically adopted by the Board of Directors in February, 2017. Because the motion involves a proposed amendment to the Articles of Incorporation, the motion was presented to the 2017 Conference but cannot be acted upon until the 2019 Conference and must receive the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the membership of the 2019 Conference present and voting. The board strongly believes that this motion allows time for necessary and important conversations as a movement.

• EFCA Proposal

• • •

MAKE AMERICA HATE AGAIN…

From the Southern Poverty Law Center:

A network of anti-LGBT churches used its “Make America Straight Again” conference to move beyond its stock fallacies and hate-filled rhetoric and call for the government to begin rounding up and executing homosexuals.

Steven Anderson, well-known for his calls for the murder of LGBTQ people, spearheads the New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement (New IFB), whose ministers spoke at the gathering. But it was the inclusion of Anderson’s lesser-known associates that revealed the breadth of the New IFB’s growing influence.

The New IFB is a group of 22 domestic and eight international churches led by Anderson’s colleagues and acolytes. Those evangelists often rival his rhetoric in their depictions of LGBTQ people as rapists and pedophiles who are a danger to society and worthy of death.

…At the conference, held June 14-16 in Orlando, Florida, speaker after speaker railed against the LGBTQ community. Preachers repeated long-discredited myths such as linking homosexuality to pedophilia and child abuse, and said LGBTQ people should be barred from adopting or fostering children. Like Grayson Fritts, their New IFB colleague in Knoxville, Tennessee, they called for the government to kill LGBTQ people.

…As Anderson left Revival Baptist Church Saturday afternoon, he briefly engaged with protesters outside the church before walking away and yelling, “Get AIDS and die!”

• • •

VAN THE MAN…

I have been remiss in failing to recommend to you Matt B. Redmond’s great series on Van Morrison on his blog, Echoes and Stars. Matt is a quintessential music lover, and he writes vividly with passion about his long time affection for the Irish singer and his remarkable career.

Writing about Van is intimidating. There’s no way around it. Each word has felt like a shadow of the real thing. Like chasing chimeras. You never feel as if you have pulled off anything close to getting at the reality of what you are dealing with. But every writer will tell you about the need to write about those subjects which rivet their attention their most. And my attention has been fixed pretty consistently on Van for nearly 25 years.

Here are the posts:

Spoiler: Matt’s favorite Van album is Hymns to the Silence (1991). Here is the opening cut from that great record, “Professional Jealousy.”

The Bible’s Formation: Beyond a “Binder” Mentality

Gethsemani Impressions: Stations of the Cross Walk (2017)

One of the best books available on the subject of how the NT canon was formed is Craig Allert’s A High View of Scripture. Allert is an evangelical, but he became troubled with the “dropped from the sky” view of scripture that evangelicals hold. He came to believe “that a high view of Scripture should take account of the historical process that bequeathed to us the Bible, and that examination of this issue should actually precede an investigation into what the Bible says” (p. 10).

Though it may be hard for evangelicals to grasp, “the Bible” (as an accepted delimited collection of authoritative writings) was not known until the fourth century. For hundreds of years, there was no canon of scripture. Yet the Church functioned in its absence.

Here is an excerpt from Allert’s fine work, which adds much needed human context to the story of how we got our Bible and what that means for our “view of scripture.”

•

Evangelicals have typically given little consideration to the formation of the New Testament and its possible implications on a doctrine of Scripture. Most evangelical consideration of canon history, if considered at all, assumes the existence of a New Testament canon from the very beginning of Christianity itself, or at least when the first document of the New Testament was completed. Many assume that as soon as a New Testament document was available, it was consciously separated from all other noncanonical documents and added to a growing New Testament canon. In this understanding, the closing of the New Testament canon occurred when the final document was received and added by the apostles, resulting in our twenty-seven-book New Testament. This understanding of the formation and closing of the New Testament canon, however, pays little attention to the historical details.

…I have called the type of understanding represented by [Benjamin] Warfield and others a “binder mentality” concerning New Testament canonicity. The picture here is that of an open three-ring binder: the church simply accepts and receives as authoritative a canonical document and then places the received document, without judgment, into the waiting binder. Once the last document has been written, received, and accepted, the binder is snapped shut forever, making the New Testament a closed collection, a closed matter.

…[With a more accurate understanding,] one can see three phases of the formation of the New Testament canon.

Phase 1. The central core of the present New Testament is already beginning to be treated as the main source for Christians. This stage was completed quite early, certainly before the end of the first century.

Phase 2. A leveling out occurs in the second and third centuries. Books in the second class now start to be cited more often, and Old Testament Scripture and New Testament Scripture come to have a more equal status. But here we still need to affirm that there is no clear distinction between books in the New Testament and books outside it. The distinction is, rather, between much-cited books and little-cited books plus books whose use is discouraged or that are explicitly directed to be used only for special purposes, such as instruction of catechumens. Here the core has long ceased to grow, but still no one thought of Scripture as forming a fixed collection. Thus, there is no simple “canonical” versus “noncanonical” distinction.

Phase 3. Fourth-century rulings about the canon become firm. But there is a paradox here. Athanasius’s Festal Letter 39 (367) is recognized as the first document to list our present twenty-seven-book New Testament as “canonical.”[38] Yet even there the threefold distinction alluded to in phase 2 still appears. Alongside the canonical (much-cited) books and the rejected (little-cited) books are books like the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache (along with apocryphal books like Wisdom of Solomon), which are stated to be useful for catechism.

In this understanding we can conceive of an authoritative body of Christian Scripture in the first century, but even into the fifth century, we cannot claim that this body of literature was closed. This has direct implications for the argument that the early church appealed to the Bible and the Bible alone for its doctrine: one cannot properly speak of a Bible in the first several centuries of the church’s existence.

• Craig D. Allert. A High View of Scripture? The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon (Evangelical Ressourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church’s Future) (pp. 38-51).

God’s Good Earth: The Case for an Unfallen Creation, by Jon Garvey, Chapter 4 – When “Very Good” Isn’t Good Enough

God’s Good Earth: The Case for an Unfallen Creation, by Jon Garvey

Chapter 4 – When “Very Good” Isn’t Good Enough

We will continue our review of God’s Good Earth: The Case for an Unfallen Creation, by Jon Garvey. Today is Chapter 4 – When “Very Good” Isn’t Good Enough. Jon makes the very cogent point that in Genesis 1:1-2:3, when God creates man not only in his image, but to “rule” and “subdue” the world, the world was not completely orderly or subdued already. Some elements of “chaos” or “disorder” still remained. Genesis 1:2, in the familiar King James Version, says “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The “without form, and void” phrase being the Hebrew tohu wabohu, which John Walton, in his Genesis books, points out the governing sense is that of lack of utility. In Scripture, tohu is used to indicate desert places where only marginal creatures live, or situations where civilization has been destroyed in judgement and cities are deserted, as if returning the earliest stage of creation.

In Genesis 1, tohu wabohu takes the form of darkness and the deep. The land is useless and empty because it is dark and covered with water. The significant point Jon makes, is that God deals with this lack of order not by destroying it, but by pushing it aside to create day and night, which make regular appearances, and dividing the waters to form the land and sea with the sea having its proper boundaries. And yet, despite their integral role in the Genesis creation, throughout the rest of Scripture both these elements—the night and the sea—retain their aura of danger and disorder. One of the 10 plagues of Egypt is darkness, night terrors are mentioned in Psalm 91, evil people make a covenant with the night in Jeremiah 31, and the NT contrasts the night of the present with the coming day in the light of Christ. The waters upend their boundaries and de-create the world in Noah’s flood, the sea is a barrier to Israel fleeing Egypt until God parts it, Jonah flees God by going to sea, which claims his life, and he expresses wonder the God is present even in the depth of the sea. Jesus calms the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and Jonah is echoed again in Paul’s shipwreck at sea. In the final age to come, in Revelation 21:1, there is a new heaven and new earth and “there was no longer any sea”. This danger and disorder in creation is never said to be “evil”, at least not in the form of human and angelic wickedness, but will be removed in the new creation for something better than the first ever was.

Many interpreters since Patristic times have noted the “cosmic temple” imagery of the creation account. The main divisions in the “cosmic temple” correspond to the main divisions in the Hebrew temple and the land of Israel. Jon illustrates this in a table:

Genesis Cosmic Temple	Hebrew Temple	Land of Israel
Heavens	Holy of Holies	Jerusalem Temple
Firmament	Curtain of the Temple	Wall of the Temple
Sky (and mountains)	Sanctuary of Priest	Jerusalem
Land	Court of Worshippers	Land of Israel
Sea	Outside World	Lands of the Gentiles

Jon notes in particular the account sets up, as part of creation itself, a radical separation between God and his dwelling, the heavens and humanity and its domain, the earth. Of course, God sets up a garden, a temple precinct or sacred garden sanctuary on earth where there is no “curtain” separating them from “face to face” fellowship with God—until they sin. Jon’s point is to show that what is described in Genesis 2 is a new step beyond the “goodness” of creation in Genesis 1. God himself breaks through the separation and comes down to meet with Adam and Eve on earth, only to have that communion broken by sin. Had the sin not occurred, the spiritual bridgehead between heaven and earth would have remained open from then on, and that face-to-face knowledge of God would have spread through the whole earth. Every story thereafter is the failure of humans, through Israel until Christ, to bridge that gap. Christ bridges that gap, the curtain is torn, and in the new age the city of God’s gates are always open. Jon says:

The implication of these two strands of teaching drawn from Genesis 1 and 2 is that there are identifiable differences between the first and second creations that are not attributable to the fall, but to the difference between the two creations themselves… The first creation, though it included humanity without sin, also involved a holy separation between earth and heaven… Furthermore, for God’s own purposes, the created order contained elements that were in some sense disorderly or dangerous to humanity (represented by the darkness and the deep), only to be removed finally, like the barrier between heaven and earth, in the new creation… Therefore, although the creation was rightly called “very good” by its Maker, meaning good for the purposes for which he created it, it was not paradise on earth—for that was reserved for the actual paradise on earth of chapter 2… So it is not that, through humanity’s sin, nature became corrupt and needs to be restored to Eden, but that because of humanity’s sin, the primeval world failed to be completed and needs the work of Christ to take it forward.

Interestingly, Jon open this chapter with the quoted passage from C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet , a book about a man’s journey to a planet where the inhabitants never experienced a “fall”, that we have discussed before:

How can I make you understand, when you do not understand the poets? The hnakra is our enemy, but he is also our beloved. We feel in our hearts his joy as he looks down from the mountain of water in the north where he was born; we leap with him when he jumps the falls; and when winter comes, and the lake smokes higher than our heads, it is with his eyes that we see it and know that his roaming time is come. We hang images of him in our houses, and the sign of all the hrossa is a hnakra. In him the spirit of the valley lives; and our young play at being hneraki as soon as they can splash in the shallows… And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.

Lewis’ point was that the wild and untamable creation was God’s good creation. That wildness and untamable-ness were an integral and inseparable part of that creation. As Lewis wrote in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.” “Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion”…”Safe?” said Mr. Beaver …”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Of course, these are all very romantic and idealized views of reality– that wildness and untamable-ness doesn’t seem so glorious and sublime when it bites you in the ass personally. I find lions magnificent, but I don’t want to be mauled by one. An estimated 225,000 people died in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, a third of them children. If one of them was yours, the intellectual argument that the dynamic tectonics of this planet are a necessary condition for the renewal of earth’s crust and the consequent abundant life, and so part of God’s good creation, is undoubtedly cold comfort. Jon will take a stab at answering the theodicy question in Chapter 11—On Pain and Suffering. But as to answering the question, why does it have to be that way now, why do we have to wait for the new creation for the end of all suffering, why couldn’t have God just started with the new creation in the first place? Jon doesn’t know, I don’t know, nobody knows.

Bring Out the Millstones

The bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, were found in the Rio Grande on Monday. (Credit: Julia Le Duc/AP)

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of stumbling-blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling-block comes!

• Matthew 18: 1-7 (NRSV)

Another Look: Just in case you were wondering, I love the Bible

Just in case you were wondering, I love the Bible.

I learned this from my life in evangelicalism. One key characteristic of evangelical Christianity is its commitment to the Bible as God’s Word. The evangelical (and “soft” fundamentalist) churches I was in were “Bible” churches, plain and simple. That’s what we were about. We taught the Scriptures. Sermons were expository analyses of biblical texts, sometimes going verse by verse and book by book. Sunday School classes were usually on books of the Bible. We had small group Bible studies too. We memorized verses and passages. We had daily Bible devotions. People carried their Bibles to church, underlined passages, took notes. We did “sword drills” in VBS and Sunday School and the children had programs in which they received rewards for memorizing scripture. We tried our best to live our lives and run our churches “according to the Bible” (as we “literally” understood it). We often had to work through issues in our churches and the bottom line was always “chapter and verse,” and “it is written.” One person’s conviction about a particular verse could trump a whole lot of arguments.

This is what Daniel Bebbington called evangelicalism’s commitment to Biblicism — “a high regard for and obedience to the Bible as the ultimate authority.” From the beginning of my adult Christian life, I bought into this, hook, line, and sinker.

The youth group in which I had a spiritual awakening was led by a youth pastor who was gifted at teaching the Bible, and there was a large group of us that ate it up. We memorized chapters from Proverbs and the first words I committed to memory were:

My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee;
So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding;
Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;
If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures;
Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.

• Proverbs 2:1-5, KJV

This text taught me to study diligently and to take the words of scripture deep into my mind and heart so that their wisdom would transform my life. Above all, it taught me to remain hungry and eager for truth and understanding, to view my life as a continual search for the treasures of knowledge.

And so I made my way to Bible college, a school that offered no majors at that time other than a B.S. in Bible, so that I could learn what the scriptures taught. Then, after a time in the mountains of Vermont trying to teach the Bible to the good folks there, I knew I needed to learn much more. So off I went to seminary, one of the richest times of learning and growing in my life. Unlike Bible college, which taught according to a definite and very specific system of doctrine, in seminary I began to taste the breadth of Christian teaching. I know some from other traditions would consider my seminary to be hopelessly narrow, and in some ways I see now that it was, but at least it exposed me to a few more voices outside the room and took what they said seriously. Plus, where Bible college favored rote learning, seminary encouraged me to strike out on my own, do research, develop my own positions and defend them. I spent as much time in the library as I could, tracking down every article mentioned by a prof that caught my attention.

Nor did I stop studying or hungering after my formal education either. I saw myself as a teacher, and I built my schedule around study and heavily invested in the best commentaries and books while I tried to maintain a high level of instruction in the local church. I see now that I was far too academic for most people, and perhaps I should have gone into teaching. But I felt that if God had given the Bible to all Christians and his gathering of choice was the local congregation, what better place to teach?

However, it was often a struggle, and eventually I became dissatisfied with much that evangelicalism teaches about and from the Bible. You’ve read that here at Internet Monk, and here are a few examples you might review:

I’m not going to summon up all the points made in those posts by myself or the authors I reviewed, but I encourage you to go back and read them and you will see some of the specific differences I have with my former evangelical perspectives on scripture.

What I want to point out in this post is an irony: the irony that my evangelical background set down a root in my life that eventually led me to grow away from evangelicalism.

The wisdom of Proverbs 2, the first text I memorized, encouraged me to keep hungering, to keep seeking, to keep studying and internalizing God’s Word, to never stray from following after knowledge and understanding. But one major problem with the evangelical view of scripture is that it only encourages that kind of seeking within a closed system. The carefully designed system of beliefs and practices, the doctrinal statement, the list of correct interpretations (which varies, depending upon which evangelical group you belong to), has in reality become the authority, and we are only allowed to read and interpret the Bible within that system. Any interpretation that threatens the system is discouraged or verboten. The whole enterprise can become like a giant game of Jenga. Change one block, and the tower comes crashing down.

So there are clearly defined limits beyond which one must not stray. I am not arguing that there are no boundaries at all; I am a creedal Christian, for example. However, the strict boundaries drawn within evangelical and fundamentalist circles can make for awfully tight quarters and narrow passages.

I was once visiting with a friend with whom I’d gone to Bible college, who was now a classmate at seminary. He recalled a trip to homecoming at our college and a conversation he’d had with one of our professors, a dyed-in-the-wool dispensationalist, as literal as they make ’em. The prof was complaining about how people went away to seminary and strayed from the faith he had taught them. Here’s the example he gave, I kid you not. He told my friend of a student who left and began to believe that the chain that bound Satan during the millennium in Revelation 20 was metaphorical and not an actual, physical chain. And he was appalled! The slippery slope started right there. Give up literal interpretation on any detail, and you’ll soon become an amillennialist. Which to him meant “the enemy.”

I did not apply for churches early in my ministerial career because I struggled with the issue of the timing of the Rapture, and I knew those churches would never hire anyone who didn’t toe the line on a pre-trib, “left behind” event and a specific “end times” template.

Other churches in which I served would never even have a discussion about women in leadership. The Bible taught otherwise.

One man in our church who was convinced that the Bible only allowed unleavened bread at communion held the entire congregation captive to his conviction.

My seminary turned down the services of one of the finest Old Testament professors in the world because he was not a premillennialist.

I have a million stories, but they all boil down to this: My discipling process in an evangelical setting taught me to seek knowledge and understanding like there was no tomorrow. But then, early and often, they slammed a door in my face and said, “Sorry, that’s a room into which we do not look.” Excuse me if I feel disoriented.

This is why I get so hyped up about issues like Young Earth Creationism. It is not just because I disagree with the interpretation, but because the whole approach of many who insist upon it is so . . . well, unbiblical. Sticking your fingers in your ears while shouting, “Literal! Literal! Literal!” simply does not fit with “incline thine ear unto wisdom.”

I am so grateful for the love that evangelicalism gave me for the Bible. I’m sad that this very gift meant we’d eventually part ways.

N.T. Wright on The Authority of the Bible

N.T. Wright on The Authority of the Bible

Most heirs of the Reformation, not least evangelicals, take if for granted that we are to give scripture the primary place and that everything else has to be lined up in relation to scripture. There is, indeed, an evangelical assumption, common in some circles, that evangelicals do not have any tradition. We simply open the scripture, read what it says, and take it as applying to ourselves: there the matter ends, and we do not have any ‘tradition’.

This is rather like the frequent Anglican assumption (being an Anglican myself I rather cherish this) that Anglicans have no doctrine peculiar to themselves: it is merely that if something is true the Church of England believes it. This, though not itself a refutation of the claim not to have any ‘tradition’, is for the moment sufficient indication of the inherent unlikeliness of the claim’s truth, and I am confident that most people, facing the question explicitly, will not wish that the claim be pressed. But I still find two things to be the case, both of which give me some cause for concern.

First, there is an implied, and quite unwarranted, positivism: we imagine that we are ‘reading the text, straight’, and that if somebody disagrees with us it must be because they, unlike we ourselves, are secretly using ‘presuppositions’ of this or that sort. This is simply naïve, and actually astonishingly arrogant and dangerous.

It fuels the second point, which is that evangelicals often use the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ when they mean the authority of evangelical, or Protestant, theology, since the assumption is made that we (evangelicals, or Protestants) are the ones who know and believe what the Bible is saying. And, though there is more than a grain of truth in such claims, they are by no means the whole truth, and to imagine that they are is to move from theology to ideology. If we are not careful, the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ can, by such routes, come to mean simply ‘the authority of evangelical tradition, as opposed to Catholic or rationalist ones.’

Fr. Stephen Freeman: On Praying for Everyone (in heaven and hell!)

Fr. Stephen Freeman: On Praying for Everyone (in heaven and hell!)

At his fine blog, Glory to God for All Things, Fr. Freeman makes some important remarks to those of us who are of Protestant or Catholic faith on matters related to the afterlife.

The topics of heaven, hell, purgatory, hades, life-after-death, the judgment, etc., are not among my favorites. There is a particular reason for this: everybody thinks they know more about this than they do and most people assume the Church says more about this than it does. Much of the problem, I think, lies in the fact that we torture the faith into geographical shapes, when it belongs in relational dynamics. That is to say, we think that describing heaven and hell (and other such terms) along with the rules for how they work (as places) somehow states something important and explains life-after-death. This is not only not true, but terribly misleading. It has also been a problem within Christianity for a very long time.

The debates between Protestant and Catholic, beginning in the 16th century, often centered on the rules for life-after-death (generally subsumed under the notion of how we are “saved”). That debate tended to press Christians into saying more and more about what they did not know, and forced institutions into hardened positions of dogma where no dogma belonged. Orthodoxy is neither Protestant nor Catholic, nor did it take part in the debates of those centuries. As a result, many things that are treated as hard and fast matters of assurance and dogma by Western Christians are simply not found in a definitive manner within the Orthodox faith.

Fr. Freeman goes on to say, for example, that Protestants and Catholics would never think of praying for someone we think to be in “hell.” Heaven and hell are described only in terms of finality. The Catholics, of course, hedge this with purgatory. But we think of heaven and hell as “places” where the doors, for those who enter, are shut and are locked for eternity. Thus, the common question in the evangelical church, “Where will you spend eternity?” That is understood to be one’s fate at the moment of death — you go “somewhere” and that’s that. Your fate is sealed. There is no further opportunity to change places.

This begs the question of the terms associated with “heaven” and “hell” in scripture, and to what they refer. Suffice to say here, as Fr. Freeman mentions briefly in his article, that there are several terms, that people do not fully grasp the variety of images these terms evoke, and that the point of all the terms is not to point to definite geographical places but to describe in metaphorical terms our human condition and fate in relation to God and this present life.

Nevertheless, Fr. Freeman says, the Orthodox pray specifically for those in “hell,” because the point is relational and not geographical. “The point isn’t the place or its name, but loss of communion with God and the torments associated with it,” he writes. Noting that Jewish writings and the teachings of the early Church about the afterlife are notoriously “messy” and non-systematic, hard and fast definitions and inflexible, zero-sum game thinking miss the point.

What the Church preaches is not a doctrine about places, but a doctrine of our relation and communion with God. If place-names are used, they are a matter of convenient imagery rather than a description of the topography of the larger world.

So, he continues, the Church prays. We pray to the God who is Lord everywhere and for all time, for this life and the next. We believe that he wills good for all, even for those who have passed from our sight and dwell in realms that we must (or should) admit are beyond our understanding and experience. And, I might add, whose fate lies beyond systematic explanation in our sacred scriptures.

Fr. Freeman specifies some of the prayers the Orthodox pray for the departed. Faithful or not, the Church intercedes for them, praying that their sins may be forgiven and that they may know rest. Even a prayer like this is lifted up: “Visit the bitter destitution of souls far removed from You; O Lord, have mercy on those who hated the truth out of ignorance, let Your love be to them not a burning fire, but the cool delight of Paradise.”

I concur, and will so pray. And as for me, I find it good to keep in mind Paul’s words about God’s ultimate purposes when I consider the destiny of those who pass from this life: “For God had allowed us to know the secret of his plan, and it is this: he purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Christ, that everything that exists in Heaven or earth shall find its perfection and fulfillment in him” (Ephesians 1:10, Phillips).

How I wish the Spirit would expand all our imaginations so that our prayers might be so conjoined with Christ’s Lordship that they transcend this earthly plane to encompass those in heaven, those on earth, and even those under the earth (Philippians 2:11)!

…Prayer is the consistent and unending response of the Orthodox believer to the death of anyone. We trust in God who is our salvation. Jesus has revealed to us the love of God and done everything that is necessary for the salvation of the whole world. There is nothing lacking. Our prayers do not add to what Christ has done. Rather, they unite our hearts to what He has done and offer to God, with groaning, the prayer of Christ for all: “Forgive them.” If this is not the prayer of our heart, then our heart has become estranged from God, at least in that matter.

But our hope is not in places, nor in mechanical operations of salvation. Our hope is in Christ who has done all that we could possibly ask or think. When we pray, our thoughts should be towards Him, and the infinite goodness of His mercy. The priest stands at the altar, and the people join Him in the union of their lifted hearts. He presents the one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, made present on the altar in the Body and Blood of Christ and prays, “On behalf of all and for all.”